


spear-maid of alamarr

by Flora_Obsidian



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Ensemble Cast, Gen, Non-Canon Inquisitor (Dragon Age), POV Outsider, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, canon-typical chantry bs, it’s more likely than you think, me? expressing my many feelings about faith and religion and history through fic?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28605720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flora_Obsidian/pseuds/Flora_Obsidian
Summary: Revas Lavellan, hunter and spy, interrupts Corypheus’ ritual sacrifice before it is completed, and Marked with strange magic, dies fighting to escape the aftermath.The woman who remembers being Revas Lavellan walks out of the Fade.The Herald of Andraste, the Inquisitor, as seen through the eyes of those around her.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 23





	1. Cassandra

_Those who oppose thee shall know the wrath of heaven. Field and forest shall rise and devour them, the wind shall tear their nations from the face of the earth, lightning shall rain down from the sky. They shall cry out to their false gods and find silence._ **—Canticle of Andraste 7:19**

**_cassandra_ **

The elven woman infuriates her.

Cassandra, some time from now, will come to regret her initial thoughts about the woman who would become their Herald, their Inquisitor. Will apologize, stilted, regretful, but honest. Will receive an apology in turn. But as it is, she is grieving, grappling with losses and catastrophe unimaginable after years piled on years of unrest, and though she is capable of kindness, she _hurts._ She lashes out at the nearest and most conspicuous target.

The elf does not take her ire without complaint. She never does, not now, and not in the future, when they are something approaching friends. She snaps back, fire blazing behind her eyes.

The elf wakes, dazed, hours after the Breach rips apart the sky. The Mark on her hand flickers and grows with each pulse of the Breach, green light like the tear into the Fade, like the bottleglass green of her eyes, and the words which spill from her lips at Cassandra’s demands and Leliana’s sharp questions are in a language neither of them know. The tone sounds panicked.

“Even the Dalish know Trade,” Leliana says, expression cold. “This will gain you no time, here.”

The elf blinks up at them. Looks down at the Mark on her hand, which flares and cracks like a wildfire through dried grasses.

“I do not know what happened,” she finally responds. Her accent is heavy, and unfamiliar to Cassandra—though Leliana is correct in that the tattoos across her face mark her as one of the Dalish, and Cassandra has not met many of the Dalish to be familiar with their manner of speech.

Leliana tells her she must be taken to the Breach. The elf does not protest, and Cassandra, none-too-gentle, hauls her to her feet and marches her out of the cells beneath the Chantry and into the blinding sun. The elf squints, at the sky, the glare off the snow-covered mountains. The Breach flares in the sky. So, too, does the Mark, and she goes to her knees.

She doesn’t cry out. Cassandra, reluctantly, respects that.

“This is killing you,” she says, kneeling and cutting the ropes from the elf’s wrists. The elf pulls back the moment she can, wary. Not a word of thanks. “It grows with the Breach, with each passing hour, and if we do not stop it, surely all will be lost.”

The wariness shifts, fades. Cassandra looks at a woman who has weathered hardship and come out the other side, for better or worse. 

“So I have no choice,” she says, and the calmness does not hide how it feels like an accusation.

“None of us have a choice,” Cassandra answers, and yanks her to her feet again.

She is a mage, though the soldiers had found no staff with her, only a pair of well-used daggers, small and sharp, and Leliana could find no reports of a Dalish elf with mages or templars. Cassandra, then, does not know the elf is a mage until she grabs a staff from a shattered crate and immolates a shade to ash and vapor.

“Drop your weapon,” she demands, and the elf looks back, stalwart, unyielding.

“I don’t need it to cast.”

Of course not. And carrying a staff at the Conclave would have made her that much harder to ignore.

Reluctant, Cassandra lets her keep the staff, and they push forward—to Solas, who had offered his help in the immediate aftermath; to Varric, who had not offered any help without a great deal of _persuasion_ , but is still here anyway.

The elf studies her hand, which glows and flashes still, more now that she has closed one of the small tears in the Fade. The first, of countless. Maker only knows what they will do about the rest—one person cannot be expected to heal all the holes in the sky, in the Veil itself.

And yet. One person is all they have.

Varric introduces himself, verbosely, as the dwarf is prone to doing. Cassandra, impatient, clears her throat: they have no _time_ for this.

The elf looks away from her hand at last to speak. “...Varric,” she repeats. “Solas. Pride.”

Solas looks surprised for a moment. “That would be a translation, yes.”

“Mm.” She nods. Takes a slow breath in, and lets it out. “I am Revas Lavellan.”

“Freedom,” Solas answers.

“That would be a translation, yes,” Lavellan replies, and Solas seems amused, and Cassandra continues to be impatient even as she realizes she hadn’t known Lavellan’s name, and Lavellan doesn’t know hers. No matter—there are more important things.

Lavellan looks up to the sky, then, and though she cannot hear Cassandra’s thoughts, she seems to reach the same conclusion. “We must hurry.”

Though the Mark must be causing her pain, Lavellan does not let it show. She lets nothing show, after her initial panic and collapse in Haven. Her expression is difficult to read, her voice is firm, her mannerisms blunt; she fights with that same bluntness, her spells leaning towards brute force than any subtlety, than the barriers and boosts of speed which Solas provides. She continues to demonstrate that bluntness upon meeting Chancellor Roderick, who demands her reimprisonment so that she can be taken to Val Royeaux for execution.

Cassandra is not entirely opposed to that judgment, but it is… impractical. Lavellan can close the rifts. Lavellan can potentially close _the_ rift, the Breach, the nightmare in the sky. And, he does not offer a trial.

Lavellan says nothing as Roderick ends his tirade. Then, she laughs. It is tinged with hysteria, and yet, it is genuine.

“You are a very ironic man, shemlen,” she says, and laughs some more, and says something else in that language of hers. Roderick turns the same red as his robes, and Leliana interjects before anyone can say anything else. Cassandra swallows back a disgusted noise. The disrespect, the _irreverence._

But Lavellan can close the rifts, and they must bring her forward to the Breach. Cassandra catches her when she stumbles, each time the Breach expands, and Lavellan grits her teeth and makes no sound of pain, offers no word of thanks. She marches on, and she does not let the demons or the rifts or the snow or the long climb stop her. 

Irreverent, but determined. 

She slows when they reach the Temple of Sacred Ashes—what remains of it. The stench in the air is awful, charcoal, burning, something metallic. Cassandra does not avert her gaze from the bodies, frozen in their last, awful moments. She owes them that much.

“This was… the, the ashes, were brought here? By Havard?” Lavellan speaks, stiltedly, her voice muffled by the cloth she holds to cover her mouth and nose. 

“They were,” Cassandra answers. She wants to ask—why does one of the Dalish know of Chantry history? But there is no time, and she cannot think of a way to ask it without it sounding wrong, which makes her think perhaps she shouldn’t ask it at all. The Breach looms. Varric, foolish dwarf, suggests a ladder.

“This place was large,” Lavellan whispers. “I remember that. Massive.”

The rock and earth has melted into glass, shot through with veins of eerie green. Rocks spiral upwards toward the rip in the sky, defying gravity and nature itself; pieces of the Temple are visible in the rubble, drifting through the air like clouds instead of so many tons of stone and mortar. There, parts of the columns which had lined the grand sanctuary. There, a piece of the doors that had opened into the atrium. There, Andraste, the base of the statue fixed to the ground, pieces of her torso, her crowned head, adrift. The ground steams, and she can feel the heat of it through the soles of her boots. Circling around through the rubble, trying to find the clearest path to the central rift, the green is joined by red, and the lyrium causes the air to hum and buzz in a way that makes her skin crawl.

She would be anywhere else, anywhere but here, where so many have died, so many she knew personally and knew well—friends, friends so dear they could have been family—Most Holy—

She would have died here, but because she was not here, she did not. Now, it remains to her to pick up the pieces. To Seek out the truth, to bring order to the chaos. Bringing Lavellan here is little more than desperate hope, but hope has carried many through their darkest days, and it will carry them here.

Lavellan is no longer stopping to stare. She looks at the red lyrium as they pass it, looks at the statues and the corpses and the ruins, but her pace does not once falter as she marches on. Not even as the Fade distorts, echoes, spits words back at them. Cassandra demands answers. Lavellan, over and over, repeats: _I don’t know. I don’t remember._

_Bring forth the sacrifice._

_Andraste, save me!_

_Get away from her!_

“You said a woman was behind me?” Lavellan asks. The archers are taking up position around them to provide covering fire. She dares not open the rift, she says, until they do, for none of them know what might come out on the other side. “When I fell from this rift?”

“No one knows who she was,” Cassandra tells her with a nod. “I suppose you do not remember this, either?”

Lavellan fixes her with a stony expression. 

“I was wondering if it could have been your Divine.”

Cassandra does not have time to consider this, either, does not have time for further questions, because Leliana gives the signal that her people are in position, along with some of Cullen’s troops. Lavellan lifts her hand. The rift cracks and rips. A Pride demon claws its way out from the other side, with shades and wisps and terrors, and they fight, and Lavellan stays on her feet even as the Breach above them continues to grow.

When it closes is when she collapses, and she does not rise. Solas rushes to her side, rolls her carefully onto her back. Her hand, limp and still on the ground, glows faintly.

Above them, the clouded sky twists and roils, and the rocks above them remain suspended and circling, but the strange and flickering shadows are gone. The daylight looks like daylight again. The hell which opened above them is not gone, but it is held at bay.

“She lives,” Solas calls, “but she needs a more skilled healer than I! Quickly, we must get her back to Haven.”

Cassandra sheaths her sword and signals for two of the soldiers to carry her. Foolish woman, she has only needed to make this trek twice in the day, here and back. The other times, she has the fortune of being unconscious.

When she wakes, there will be more questions, and hopefully more answers—what she was doing at the Conclave, what the last thing she remembers is, where she came from. But for now.

For now, Cassandra breathes, ash coating her throat, and looks up at the broken and fragmented statue that towers above her. 

“Andraste, have mercy on us all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (shoves my other WIPs to one side) Was chatting with my roommate when this fic latched on and refused to let go. Chapters will have individual warnings if needed. Anyone who guesses what’s up with Lavellan before The Reveal gets a virtual cookie.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are much appreciated !!
> 
> Tumblr: floraobsidian
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic, please come and check out my other Dragon Age stories: The Precipice of Change, a DA:I AU; and Crown of Laurels, or the m!Cousland/Nathaniel Howe slow burn enemies to lovers no one asked for but got anyway.


	2. Varric

_You have grieved as I have. You, who made worlds out of nothing. We are alike in sorrow, sculptor and clay, comforting each other in our art._ **—Canticle of Trials, 1:8**

**_varric_ **

Varric isn’t sure how to describe their Herald. He’s thinking a lot about it, of course; even if he never publishes any of it, he’s writing all of this down for posterity, one voice of many telling his account of whatever the hell is going on these days.

It almost feels like home. Not enough _city_ —Haven is half quaint village and half hastily-built military base—but the number of demons is about the same.

He can _describe_ Lavellan well enough, if it’s just the facts, what few he knows. Red-brown hair, always in a braid. Eyes like green glass. Tanned and freckled skin. Pale, yellow-gold vallaslin. Falon’Din, he thinks. Daisy explained it all to him, what her tattoos meant, and what the others he had seen meant. Falon’Din—the elven god of the dead. 

He can make a good metaphor out of that. Her name means _freedom,_ Solas had mentioned on the trek up the mountain—freedom in death, freedom _from_ death, something, something, walked from the Fade unharmed and alive. It’s a start, if nothing else.

But Varric _knows_ very little about her, all said and done. She tries to keep to herself, but isn’t given much of a choice. She butts heads with Cassandra constantly. She disparages the Chantry just as often, and she laughs when people call her Andraste’s Herald. She wanders the woods, gathering herbs. She walks through Haven, ignoring the stares directed her way as though she’s used to it all, or just _very_ good at putting on a face of indifference. She listens.

For all her dislike of the Chantry, during the first several days of her time in Haven, she sits inside of it as unobtrusively as possible and _listens._ The few who recognize her and are brave enough to question—or, like with Varric, the few who are nosy enough to pry—are told that while the Dalish tell stories of Andraste, who fought with Shartan and freed the elven slaves from much of Tevinter, they do not worship her, and that Lavellan would like to know what human stories they tell firsthand.

The Chantry sisters are scandalized when Lavellan mentions Shartan. Varric would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall for the following argument when they tried to say his story was Dissonant—he caught only the tail end of it, echoing through the closed doors, and saw Lavellan storming out in a righteous fury a moment later. After that, she avoids the Chantry and the sisters more often.

She doesn’t wear shoes, but carefully wraps her feet in warm cloth, and does the same to her wrists and the palms of her hands. She finds the blacksmith the moment she hears there is one and gets him to forge a blade nearly half the length of the staff she carries, and then she gets him to attach it to the end of said staff. It’s almost comical, the way that she carries it around, for it’s taller than she is now, but Varric knows she knows how to use it and that takes the humor right out.

She thanks him, and the quartermaster, and the apothecary, all for the work that they’ve done. Then she finds Varric and thanks him, too. 

“Whatever for, my lady Herald?” he asks her. Her relatively pleasant expression—by which Varric means, her usual stonewall—curdles.

“Not a Herald.”

“I’m afraid correcting people on that won’t get you far. Once you get a title, that thing takes on a life of its own.”

She laughs, a sharp and bitter thing. “You’re right, in that. But you’re not people. If I may call you Varric, and not Master Tethras, you may call me anything else.”

 _Please call me literally anything else_ is left unspoken but heavily implied. 

Varric nods, conceding the point. “Well, I’ll have to come up with a good nickname, then. We’ve got our Lady Seeker, and Chuckles… Ruffles, Curly, Nightingale… any input, or do I have free reign?”

She looks startled, then, like she hadn’t expected him to agree. 

“I don’t…"

“I’ll let you know when I come up with something, how’s that?”

She hates it when people treat her as something more than she is, which means she’s often in a foul mood. Despite that, she has moments of what Varric hesitates to call softness, because she isn’t _soft_ or _tender_ or anything like that, it’s just… She’s as blunt as ever, and yet, she thanks him for fighting at her side. She thanks the servants, the workers, the passing soldiers and guards and scouts.

Kindness. That’s the word. Not a gentle kindness, but kindness all the same.

She doesn’t ask for anything she doesn’t need. The blade on her staff has a practical use. The fur-lined cloak she requests from the quartermaster is for warmth. Varric overhears a conversation between her and Ruffles about appearances and almost gives himself away laughing, as Lavellan responds:

“Why do I need to look like anything? I am to travel and close rifts and be covered in blood and demon goop. I will be fighting. I will not look _nice._ ”

She has a point. Maker knows how many perfectly good jackets he ruined because of Hawke’s insistence on going into caves to fight giant spiders. 

She’s a set of contradictions, and Varric isn’t entirely sure what to make of her yet. But he knows what it does to a person when they start to lose themselves in a name too big for them, and so he keeps an eye out for her. Maybe she isn’t someone he’ll grow to like—though how she makes the Seeker fume and fuss puts her in his good books—but he worries all the same.

“So, Harold,” he says to her once, unprompted. “Are you ready to see Val Royeaux?”

“Orlais is a shiny shithole built on the backs of my people,” she answers promptly with venom and vitriol—which, fair, he _did_ ask—and then stops in her tracks. “...Harold?”

“You weren’t fond of Herald, so I thought I’d switch a few letters around. I can switch a few more, if you like.”

There’s a pause. Then, she laughs, in the same way she laughs when she overhears a Chantry sister preaching of Andraste, sacred and sanctified.

“Harold,” she says. “Harold! I love it. Only call me that, now, please.”

“Your wish is my command, my Lady Harold.”

Her laughter echoes up the path that leads away from Haven as they set out.

* * *

Val Royeaux is a shiny shithole, and this is coming from Varric, who likes the finer and fancier things in life. Their visit isn’t entirely a waste, at least; they recruit a Jenny, and they gain the alliance of the First Enchantress to the Imperial Court, and they are given a message by Fiona of the mage rebellion. They also see the Lord Seeker march his Templars out of the city and bludgeon a Revered Mother over the head. So, not entirely a good time, either.

Shiny shithole.

But now they only wait for Cassandra and Solas to finish up a bit of individual business they each had, standing to one side of the Summer Bazaar, all bright colors, pennants and banners waving in a cool breeze, chattering voices and merchants selling their wares. Almost reminds him of Hightown, in a way—Hightown was a shiny shithole, too, but it was _his_ shiny shithole.

“Varric?” Lavellan asks, interrupting his musings, and her voice is unusually quiet. 

“What can I do for you, Harold?” he asks. It brings the ghost of a smile to her lips, so things can’t be too bad. 

“I have a… favor. A request. Please.”

He straightens up. She sounds like she isn’t sure how to ask, or she isn’t sure he’d say yes, or both. But, she isn’t acting the way his friends did when their _favor_ was something more like, “hey, Varric, could you come to the Bone Pit with me again? I promise there won’t be any more dragons,” despite there always being more dragons in the Bone Pit. 

In fact, she doesn’t ask anyone for favors that he's noticed. So Varric, recognizing the moment for what it is, pays attention.

“Your wish is but my command.”

“Would you go into that shop, the… the one down the street, on the other side from us." She points. "And could you ask how much the scarf in the window is? Just, just to ask, that’s all.”

They’re garnering odd looks, a dwarf and a Dalish elf standing so brazenly in the marketplace, dressed for travel—and not in the Orlesian style. Varric doesn’t care, never has, and as far as he’s been able to tell Lavellan deems it all beneath her notice. 

He was wrong, so it seems.

“Sure thing,” Varric says, careful to sound just as casual as he had before. Nothing out of the ordinary. No calling attention to this any more than Lavellan already has by asking. “You sure you just want me to ask?”

“Just ask,” she says, quick, sharp. “I doubt any of us can afford any of the overpriced nonsense and excess in this place.”

A few of the nobles in earshot raise their fans to their masked faces, scandalized, Varric notes with amusement. 

He finds the place she was talking about, some place that is, indeed, well out of their price range for casual spending, clothes of fine fabrics and etched beads made of precious stones and gems. Prissy Orlesian styles. The usual. Though, not as ridiculous as some of their fashions.

Still, as Varric approaches the shopkeep, he crunches numbers in the back of his mind—prices have been all out of sorts since the Blight, rampant inflation and deflation in different markets, all in flux, all always changing. The value of the sovereign is exponentially smaller than what it once was. But he’s got fingers in all kinds of pots. One thing loses value, another thing gains it. He arranged for contacts with the Merchants’ Guild to start funneling some of that gold of his towards the fledgling Inquisition the moment he found out about it. 

Lavellan doesn’t ask for favors. Doesn’t let on that anything is bothering her. It reminds him all too much of Hawke, in the last few years, but here they're only just getting started. Maker knows what the future has in store.

So Varric greets the man who approaches him with an easygoing smile, clasps his hands together in a way that flashes the many fancy rings on his fingers, and asks:

“How much for that lovely scarf in the window? I know a young woman who’s had her eye on it, and I was thinking I might surprise her.”

The others have joined Lavellan by the time he finishes haggling, and he doesn’t have time to hand the wrapped package over as Cassandra immediately begins to harass him for being late, as though he wasn’t the one waiting on her. He deflects and dodges, which only annoys her more, and Lavellan starts to snicker as they walk back down the Avenue leaving the city which makes things worse. Only when they’re in their carriage which will take them to the harbor does he take it from his jacket and hand it over. Solas is sitting up with the driver, fond of the sunlight and open air, and Cassandra is riding separately on horseback, so it’s only the two of them inside.

Lavellan blinks. She looks at the scented paper which the shop had wrapped his purchase in, the fine ribbon it’s tied with.

“A gift,” he says, prompting. “For you. Go on, open it.”

She does. She goes very still.

“I didn’t-” she starts.

“A _gift,_ ” Varric repeats. “They had it up in the window because it was on discount, if that makes you feel any better. Besides, with the Lady Seeker putting up our room and board, and all meals provided free of charge, it’s not like I’ve been spending much lately.”

It had not been on discount. It had been more expensive than a simple, unadorned scarf had any right to be—but, the shopkeep had said, that was all the rage! Minimalism, or something like that. Less is more. His lady friend had good taste, didn’t he know!

Lavellan is staring at him, and her mask is gone, and she looks tired and stunned and deeply touched all at once. If Varric was the cuddly type—if he thought she would let him—he would give her a hug. As it is, he nudges her knee with the toe of his boot. 

“You deserve nice things, in the middle of all this mess, you know.”

She clears her throat and looks away. With something like reverence, she runs her fingers across the fabric, a fine silk weave dyed a pale golden-yellow. 

“I… had one, this color. A long time ago. I think it burned. I didn’t… hm. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Varric answers gently, and turns to find the passing scenery outside the window the most interesting thing in the whole damn world to give her a few minutes to compose herself.

* * *

Lavellan rides into the Hinterlands like a battering ram and makes herself the biggest problem around. All the other problems now need to deal with her.

Maker’s breath, he misses Hawke so much it hurts. 

They gather herbs. They hunt rams. They deal with wolves, and mark locations for watchtowers, and clear out some of the more radical groups of mages and rogue Templars who won’t listen to reason. A surprising number of them realize they’re willing to surrender when they see the elven woman charging them with a staff and blade even taller than she is, the wrath of heaven blazing at her fingertips.

Oh, that’s a good line. Varric pauses to scribble it down in a notebook he keeps in his pocket for this very purpose, and ignores Cassandra’s disapproving glare. 

Horsemaster Dennett returns to Haven. The Crossroads see more and more refugees coming in now that the paths to get there are safe. Most of the rifts are closed. Lavellan, jaw set, continues forward without faltering. 

Varric follows in her footsteps, crossbow loaded. Right now, that’s all he can do.

They’ve paused to rest, just but a moment. There had been a bear. None of them wanted to walk far after fighting the bear. 

Down the road—or what passed for a road, at least, in the middle of these bloody hills, is one of the monuments to Tyrdda Bright-Axe they had passed before on their journey to find the horsemaster. Here, in the small glade where Varric tries to figure out how he could fix the _teeth marks in his crossbow_ , surrounded by crumbling stone and overgrown brush and briar, another statue: Maferath Repentant. His face is hidden, as though he’s weeping.

“It’s strange,” Cassandra says to no one in particular. She’s resting, which is a testament to how much the fight had taken out of them all. Varric never thought he’d see the day when Cassandra was _resting._ “How no one knew that Tyrrda was a mage. It seems so… obvious, knowing, and reading those inscriptions.”

Varric hums a moment in thought. They’ve been in the Hinterlands for close to two weeks, running themselves ragged, more than enough time for Nightingale’s scouts, with the monuments as a guide, to track down the famous Avvar’s final resting place—and the staff she was buried with. He starts to say something about how stories are often misleading, and how tales are butchered in their constant retellings, and how no one giving an account can be perfectly unbiased. It’s why he never needed to do much work with the rumors, back in Kirkwall. The things had minds of their own, and after a point, Hawke’s adventures became so improbable even _he_ wouldn’t believe the stories, had he not been there himself.

Then he considers who he’d be saying that to, and says nothing at all.

Lavellan is sitting at the base of the statue, back resting against the mossy stone, head tilted back to gaze at the hands which cover Maferath’s face. Her staff is sideways across her lap. 

“Many things are lost to time,” she says. “More than we would like. More than we ever dreamed could vanish. There is likely much, much more still that we do not even know is missing.”

“That is… I suppose, that you would know,” Cassandra answers, and Varric actually thinks she means it to be comforting, or sympathetic. But it comes out terse, and she and Lavellan haven’t managed a polite conversation since their trip to Val Royeaux, where Lavellan had taken one look at the statues which lined the Avenue of Her Reflective Thought and promptly burst into peals of laughter. At the Seeker’s tone, Lavellan takes offense and sits all the way up, and Varric is so invested in the new petty drama he nearly misses the look Solas gives, as though he’s just seeing Lavellan for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Varric is my favorite dwarf, in a four-way tie with the dwarf origins and Sigrun. Expect more of his POV in the future.
> 
> As always, thank you for taking the time to read, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Comments and kudos are much appreciated!!
> 
> Tumblr: floraobsidian


	3. Vivienne

_All things in this world are finite. What one man gains, another has lost._ **—Canticle of Transfigurations, 1:5**

**_vivienne_ **

Haven is quaint. Bitterly cold. Filled with people who are running to and fro without direction. Maker’s breath, but this will hardly last long, if this is how they all conduct themselves. The only exceptions are like a breath of fresh air—Ambassador Montilyet, who understands the importance of a good cup of tea, of keeping up appearances—Sister Nightingale, whose days as a bard are long behind her in practice, but who remembers the dance of the Game as though she never left it behind. Though, in truth, no one ever does.

And then there is Revas Lavellan, Herald of Andraste.

She has no care for politics or subtlety—in that regard, she’s something like a battering ram, and Vivienne is already preparing for the visit to the Winter Palace, though it’s months and months down the road. If Lavellan can’t learn, Vivienne will be doing damage control.

She’s also adamant in seeking out each one of the people she recruits to the fledgling Inquisition and talking to them, even if it winds up in an argument, raised tempers and sharp words. Vivienne has seen the aftermath of it in Cassandra, in Sera, the latter of whom had taken out her frustrations by trying to leave buckets of water above the door to Vivienne’s bedchambers. In that Tevinter mage, who has opinions about his homeland and their practices which Lavellan disagrees with. Vivienne is only waiting for her turn, so to speak.

Well. Vivienne isn’t one to seek out others—let them come to her. But she likes to keep people on their toes, and she sees an opportunity one evening in the Chantry. Lavellan is so rarely in the building, unless she’s being forced to meet there, and so Vivienne does not see her often. That she’s here at all, looking up at the statue of Andraste which stands opposite a statue of Havard, is a rarity, and Vivienne crosses the sanctuary from her own alcove to stand beside her.

Lavellan is wearing a scarf from Val Royeaux like a hooded cowl, pale golden-yellow. Large enough to be worn more like a shawl, if she so chooses. Her hair is braided to one side, the reddish curls resting over her left shoulder. Vivienne takes note; everything else the Herald wears is well-made and well-kept, but very much well- _used,_ and she hadn’t taken the elven woman as one to spend money on personal indulgences. Utility and longevity, over appearance. The scarf is an oddity.

“Herald,” she greets. “What a pleasant surprise to see you here.”

“Revas. Or Lavellan, if you must,” Lavellan corrects. “I am no Herald. Truthfully.”

“Lady Lavellan,” Vivienne amends gracefully. “Might I ask what brings you here?”

Lavellan glances to Vivienne, then back to the statue. 

“She would be armored,” she says at last. “Andraste. She led an army to Tevinter, and she fought, so says your Chant. There are few who would go into battle wearing no armor, but the way she is shown…”

“Ascended to the Maker’s side, most artists depict Andraste with the serenity befitting a goddess,” Vivienne answers, though there was no question asked. Lavellan is leading to something, though Vivienne isn’t sure what. She’s curious. “Anything else makes her human.”

“She was mortal, though. Isn’t that the point? That a mortal could plead on behalf of her fellows for their Creator to return?”

“You’re remarkably well-versed in the Chant, my dear.”

“Because I am Dalish?” Lavellan bites out. _There_ are her teeth, there is her temper. Just a warning, though. Vivienne doesn’t think that anyone has seen Lavellan truly angry, yet.

“Because most who attend Chantry services are there to listen, and all they do is listen,” she counters smoothly. “They do not discuss or debate it. To do so is practically heresy.”

“That seems a poor way to run a religion,” Lavellan says, dry as the desert, and the flash of temper fades away. “What about you? Do you discuss, as well as listen?”

“Frequently! Tell me, my dear, you intend to ally with the mages in rebellion, and you make your distaste for the Chantry’s treatment of magic very well known. You have vocal opinions about their freedom and the current state of things. What would you do differently?”

Lavellan turns away from the statue to fully face her, and she leans back against the pedestal like it’s a bench and not supporting the likeness of the Prophet herself. “You think I will have the authority to change things?”

“I think you very well could. Your name is on the lips of countless across Thedas.”

“Should any one person have that power?”

“Perhaps not, but that does not stop a person from obtaining it.”

Lavellan considers this for a moment.

“I think that when people say, magic exists to serve man, they forget the rest of… What you call the Chant, it’s the records of her teachings, her words. And people say that, and do not say anything else. Cruel and wicked are the ones who turn the gifts they are given against their fellows,” she paraphrases. “Those who do so without provocation are corrupt. How the Chantry has treated mages is wrong, and it is based in wrongness, and it must be changed. There are _other ways,_ Lady Vivienne. The Dalish do not need Circles or Templars, and Templars have only existed in the modern ages. There are ways to teach and train without putting an entire group of people at the mercies—if there are any mercies to be found—of another.”

“Would the Dalish take in all our mages, now that the Circles are dissolved in function and in name?” Vivienne questions. “I cannot see that going well... or at all.”

Lavellan scoffs and folds her arms across her chest. “Hardly, though the Chantry does not help the relations between the people and the humans. I suppose what I am saying is the Chantry itself must change, and must change radically, if it is to remain.”

“That is a bold claim, my dear. What would you propose?”

“Mages. In positions of authority. As you yourself did, though you are an exception to the rule.”

An _exception._ Why, Vivienne would see that as an insult disguised as flattery, if she thought Lavellan was capable of the subtlety—and _she_ does not mean that as an insult, either. A statement of fact, in the same way Lavellan intended it.

“An exception?” she prods. “Whatever do you mean?”

“You keep mages in Circle towers. You, meaning humans, that is. Make them Tranquil in whatever is deemed an extenuating circumstance. They are not allowed to leave. Correct?"

“Any mage is allowed to leave with dispensation from the First Enchanter.”

“So which is it?” Lavellan asks, and Vivienne raises an eyebrow. “Mages can leave the Circle with dispensation, but mages know nothing of the world but for the Circles and the Templars. How achievable would it be, for another to do what you did?”

Ah. She knows how to listen, and she _remembers,_ repeating almost verbatim what Vivienne had said in an earlier discussion about the Circles, on the ship back from Val Royeaux.

“It depended on the individual, and on the Circle. As I said, if you recall, there is no singular universal experience to be had.”

Lavellan looks unimpressed. It’s as refreshing as it is irritating. Vivienne is quite enjoying this verbal tete-a-tete. 

“But, you are correct. It takes connections and influence to achieve such a position, and while being a public face for my fellows can bring about a change in attitude, progress is as always slow. Mages _do_ need to be protected. From themselves, and from others.” Lavellan makes a noise that indicates she doesn’t entirely agree. Vivienne ignores it. Others may say what they will—the world is too untrusting of magic for a mage to be without defenses. “In what other authority would you see mages have influence, then?”

“I understand that in Val Royeaux, the Sunburst Throne remains empty.” 

Lavellan pushes off from the statue, and Vivienne, for the first time in quite a long time, is caught so off-guard that she needs a noticeable moment to formulate a response. Lavellan takes that moment to continue.

“Do you know who _doesn’t_ wear armor into a battle, Lady Vivienne?” she asks. 

It’s a leading question, rather insulting in its simplicity. She schools her expression into something distinctly unimpressed; the easiest masks are the ones that are truthful. But, she knows the answer. And she has found where Lavellan intended to lead this conversation to.

“An incredibly foolish soldier,” she says. “Or, an incredibly skilled mage.”

“Indeed,” Lavellan agrees, and spares one more look for the statue behind her before taking her leave. “Good evening, Lady Vivienne.”

“Lady Lavellan,” Vivienne answers, and regards the statue in silence for some time afterward.

It is borderline heresy to speak such things, or even to imply them—even to suggest a mage should be allowed free leave of their Circle tower is enough for condemnation. The Imperial Chantry in Tevinter preaches that Andraste was a mage, which only makes it more taboo. Lavellan, as a Dalish mage, would be thrown on the pyre herself for voicing such thoughts in earshot of the wrong person, and she would keep none of the reverence Andraste held.

Much to think about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I write foreshadowing and it's subtle. Sometimes I tie the foreshadowing to a brick and throw it in the direction of the story and wait to see what happens.
> 
> Anyway, I really like Vivienne's character!! I think she's underappreciated a lot, and that Bioware did her dirty in a lot of ways. My Inquisitors usually disagree with her on most things, but she's super neat and complex and I wish there was more of her in fic.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed. Comments and kudos are as ever appreciated <3
> 
> Tumblr: floraobsidian


	4. Dorian

_Those who had sought to claim Heaven by violence destroyed it. What was golden and pure turned black. Those who had once been mage-lords, the brightest of their age, were no longer men, but monsters._ **—Canticle of Threnodies, 12:1**

**_dorian_ **

The blur of magic is disorienting, nauseating, exhilarating. It’s everything Dorian believed to be impossible and everything he had ever hoped to avoid.

Andraste’s Herald pressing the too-sharp blade of her staff against his throat is something he hasn’t _consciously_ hoped to avoid, but now that it’s happening to him, he would rather prefer it wasn’t. He’s too pretty to die like this, out of time in a dungeon full of red lyrium and stagnant water.

“Now, there’s really no call for that,” he says, keeping very, very still.

Lavellan is glaring at him, wild-eyed and pale in the eerie lighting. Her hands are white-knuckled around her staff, but her grip is steady. Dorian does not think she would hesitate to kill him, if it came to it.

“What have you _done,_ Tevinter,” she bites out, and it is a demand, not a question. Calling him just by his home nation, too—she would be infuriated if he called her ‘Dalish,’ no doubt, and yet. 

“I? I have done nothing. Alexius, it seems, has displaced us both in location _and_ time.”

“And you, by your own admission, helped him make that magic. So how do I know this wasn’t part of his trap? Explain. I am not feeling patient.”

“Yes, I can see that."

Nearly waist-deep in the small pool that’s formed in the middle of the room, he gives as brief a summary as he can manage of how the magic which he and Alexius had been trying to create would have worked, and how this attempt might have been disrupted, sending them here. He stresses that if they find the amulet, _he_ can figure out a way to get them back, which is what finally makes her lower her weapon.

 _Kaffas._ She’s a force to be reckoned with, and where she stands, on the edge of the pool above him, flanked on either side by statues of Andraste and Maferath, with red lyrium growing from the stone the fires which had consumed the Prophet herself, does nothing to make him feel any less intimidated. 

But, she’s not actively trying to kill him! That’s a start, at least. She won’t stab him in the back so long as he’s her ticket out of here.

They find scraps of paper, mildewing diaries and journals and months-old orders. They find what remains of the former Grand Enchanter, fused to the red lyrium growing from the walls like blighted tumors, and while Dorian is staring in horrified fascination, Lavellan steps forward to speak in a low tone. Fiona is too weak to do anything but nod, and Dorian swears her expression is relieved.

Lavellan carefully steps around the growths of glowing red, takes a small dagger from her belt, and plunges it through the base of Fiona’s skull. The blood that coats the metal is dark and viscous and almost luminescent. 

They’ve been gone a year. How can so much have gone wrong in a year?

Varric and Solas are better, in some relative sense of the term. They can walk of their own accord. Lavellan breaks the locks on their cells with a concentrated burst of force magic and looks at them with pained resignation, and she hands Solas a staff she pulled off a Venatori mage, and Varric a longbow taken from a Venatori archer.

Then there isn’t much left to do but fight their way to Alexius, and so, they fight.

Varric hums something odd and dissonant with the buzzing of lyrium in the air. Cassandra does not so much as hum as she does whisper, fragments of the Chant, _Andraste have mercy on your souls. No one else will._ Solas says nothing at all, and Lavellan marches on in silence, determined and deadly.

She flinches, though, when Dorian uses fire.

Her own spells are beautiful, and she’s clearly a master of the primal school, freezing puddles around the feet of their Venatori opponents, calling lightning out of thin air. She summons a lightning bolt directly into the pool through which half a dozen soldiers are charging through, swords drawn, towards her. His hair stands on end, the air smells sharp of ozone, and between the damp conditions and their metal armor, what’s left behind is half a dozen charred corpses in chainmail so hot that it spits and steams as they collapse into the water. The smell of burnt meat joins all the other awful smells in this place. Lavellan is unbothered.

But Dorian, Dorian flings out a fireball to dissuade a man carrying a war-hammer as thick around as his torso from getting too close, and the man goes up in a column of fire and smoke and screaming, and Lavellan looks as though she may be ill. Is what he does really so horrifying, compared to her? Maker’s breath, the hypocrisy of it reeks almost as bad as the stagnant water.

They keep moving. They find Leliana, and fragmented shards of red lyrium to shape into a key. Varric carries them, says the stuff is already growing out of his skin, so it can’t hurt him, really.

His voice echoes over itself with the same buzzing hum that rings from the walls, and yet it is discomfitingly flat. 

In one corridor, making their way back to the main hall, Dorian finds himself at the head of the group, and he doesn’t realize that he’s alone there until he hears Leliana snap:

“What are you staring at? We have no time to waste.”

Dorian turns. Lavellan is several paces behind their group, looking at the wall, at the artwork there. Dorian, for the life of him, can’t understand what’s so interesting about a painting _now_ of all times.

“That is Shartan,” she finally answers. “At Minrathous.”

Yes, he recognizes the piece, hanging crooked on the stone. It’s damp and crumbling and badly damaged by the water and the air, but there are very few images of Shartan the Liberator, both in Tevinter and in the South, although for different reasons. His home isn’t fond of any artwork that glorifies the leader of a slave rebellion, and the Orlesian Chantry had all images of him burned after the Exalted March against the Dales. Can’t have people know an elf was friends with Andraste, oh, no, that wouldn’t do at all.

“The Chantry destroyed all art of him,” Lavellan says, voicing a few of Dorian’s thoughts. There’s something strange and shaky about her voice as she looks up, the first time he’s heard her truly waver since they got to this hellscape. “Why is it… here?”

“It’s a Tevinter piece, so I imagine Alexius brought it with him for the rest of his horrid redecorating.” Maybe if he answers, they can move on more quickly from here. “If I recall, it was rather controversial at the time—the artist titled it _The Folly of the Elves,_ and his competitors claimed that his framing of the subject actually meant to put Shartan in a positive light, and Tevinter in a negative light, and the title was all just pretense… not that it stopped prints and reproductions, as you can see.”

He’s the center of the piece, heroic mid-leap, sword and shield raised high. Arrows fly from the walls of Minrathous. The skies behind him are dark with thunderclouds and lightning and the wrath of heaven. Behind him, a yellow cape billows dramatically in the wind.

All artistic license, of course.

“Thank you for the history lesson,” Leliana says. “Are we done here?”

Much later, he will realize just how much Leliana is capable of changing, when he is able to sit with her and discuss and debate, when he sees her smile and joke and tell stories, when he hears of the news of her various reforms on the Sunburst Throne as he makes his own changes in Minrathous. But now she is twisted and bitter and wrecked by this nightmarish future, and she has no time for tales. 

Lavellan breaks away from the painting, continues with him. She never lets him walk behind her. She barely trusts him to complete the ritual which will send them back to their original time, and when they reappear in front of a still-living Alexius and Felix, she takes six measured steps away from Dorian and folds her arms across her chest.

Dorian really isn’t sure what her problem with him is. Problems with Tevinter, he can understand—he also has problems with Tevinter, albeit of a more nuanced nature than most of the south seems to hold. Him, personally? He’s never met the Herald before this, and she has no reason to distrust him. In fact, he would say that coming out of that nightmare was an excellent bonding experience.

Instead, in the aftermath, she looks to Fiona and says, “We will discuss your alliance with the Inquisition at a later hour,” and she looks at the guards in the throne room of Redcliffe Castle and says, “Lock Alexius up,” and she looks at her compatriots and says, “Just… Come. Let us leave.”

She ignores Dorian completely until he starts to follow, and then she takes another measured step away from him and regards him with an expression which may as well have been carved from stone, unyielding as any statue.

“You have important information about Alexius’ research, and can verify the things he tells us. You may accompany the Inquisition back to Haven, Tevinter, but kindly keep your distance from me.”

Dorian gives her a practiced smile so fake and bright it almost hurts. “Of course, my Lady Herald.”

So much for bonding experiences. He shouldn’t be surprised. This is the south, after all, and they haven’t been fond of Tevinter in ages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Dorian, but he and Lavellan do not get along at ALL for a while. Like, it gets worse, before it gets better. But please know that I'm v fond of this fancy mage.
> 
> I posted a WIP of Lavellan on my writing blog !! You can go check it out there. I picture her wearing her scarf as an actual scarf or as a cowl like Leliana’s, but I really liked the pose in the ref image I used, so.
> 
> Side note abt the art in DA:I, but if you walk around looking at all the paintings and things in different buildings, most of them are just the same sets of images in different frames. Several are noted on the wiki as being images of Andraste, or Andraste and Shartan. Kind of like how the statues displayed in different places are all the same sets of statues. It's a game, don't read too much into it. Except, I want to, so I did.
> 
> In-game lore states that all depictions (sans one) of Shartan were destroyed after the Second Exalted March against the Dales, and nearly all references to him and to elves were removed from the Chant. So, there shouldn't be any depictions of him anywhere in-game, never mind there being as many as there are. I'm taking this lore discrepancy that probably no one was supposed to have noticed and making it into a minor plot point. Mine now.
> 
> Anyway. Getting off topic.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Comments and kudos are v much appreciated.
> 
> Tumblr: floraobsidian


	5. The Iron Bull

_Those who bear false witness and work to deceive others, know this: there is but one Truth._ **—Canticle of Transfigurations, 1:4**

**_the iron bull_ **

If he hadn’t seen her fight, the Iron Bull would be concerned of even breathing too heavily near Lavellan out of fear that she would break apart. She’s a tiny bas, even shorter than Dalish.

But, he _has_ seen her fight, both at range and in close quarters; the spells she casts seem to come to her with ease, and when her casting begins to slow or their opponents get too close, she spins the staff in her hand around and fights with muscle and blade. Maybe once they get to know each other better, he’ll ask her to spar—she’s a damned good fighter. It’s impressive, not that he says as much in the reports he sends back homeward. 

The Herald of Andraste is a Dalish elf, from Clan Lavellan, up in the Free Marches near Wycome. The Herald of Andraste is bas saarebas. Leans towards elemental magic (Dalish would tell him there’s specific schools of magic, and would know which one Lavellan specializes in. Not that Dalish is a mage, or anything.), particularly lightning and frost. Travels with a small contingent of others from the Inquisition, usually another mage and a pair of melee fighters.

He’s not supposed to be impressed by her skill. So. Officially, he isn’t. 

He’s also not supposed to be impressed by her as a person, but. The Iron Bull can tell, just from their brief introduction on the Storm Coast and the following few days, that she’s a capable leader, that she can make the hard decisions without faltering. And he can tell that while her blunt attitude isn’t a front, it’s a little bit of a mask. When she doesn’t think anyone’s looking, some of it eases, and she looks all of a sudden exhausted.

Well. 

Leading will do that to a person.

She doesn’t trust him. The Iron Bull gets that—she shouldn’t, not in everything. But she does need to trust him enough to watch her back, given that’s what he signed on to do, and there’s no better way to do that than fighting together in battle. 

The Iron Bull does so enjoy killing ‘Vints. So does Lavellan. Maybe it can be a bonding experience.

#

Her mask breaks just a few times that the Iron Bull has seen. Once, in those early days on the Storm Coast, fighting the Venatori and dealing with the Blades of Hessarian—and the Blades make her quiet in a way he hasn’t observed enough to parse out, but her expression in dealing with them stays much the same. No particularly strong feelings save for blunt determination in finding their leader, challenging him, and making him answer for the death of Inquisition scouts. No particularly strong feelings about the surviving Blades swear their allegiance to her in the aftermath save for a short burst of laughter as they leave the stronghold. The others she’s traveling with—the dwarf Varric, and the hedge mage Solas—share a brief glance, one that speaks to this kind of reaction being normal, but no less confusing for how familiar it is.

Now there’s a couple of bruisers and a spellbinder back behind them, and the Iron Bull is trying to bludgeon past their guard to take out the mage before he can cause any trouble. Lavellan is dealing with a rogue that managed to slip past his defenses, but she’s just as capable in melee as she is at range, and he’s more concerned with keeping the rest off her. Solas freezes one of the bruisers solid so that the Iron Bull can shatter him like glass. Varric picks off the rogue near Lavellan with a crossbow bolt to the neck. Blood splatters. The Iron Bull raises his greataxe and charges towards the last man between him and the mage.

The ground beneath his feet begins to glow red. He snarls a curse and manages to get out of the way—he really, really doesn’t like that kind of magic. Difficult to catch it happening until it’s too late. It bursts into flames a moment later. Behind him, there’s a shriek, and the roar of fire, and he can’t turn to look—one hit, and the man’s helmet crumples like paper, and the spellbinder doesn’t have any armor to speak of that will keep him safe.

Done. His greataxe drips blood. He turns, assessing. 

Lavellan is unharmed, but one of the glyphs had been cast underneath her as well, and in her panic she’s frozen half a foot of solid ice across the ground at her feet, trapping her in place. It’s worked, at least, disrupting the fire that would have burst around her, but now she’s caught and there’s a second rogue jumping out of the shadows with bloodied knives raised.

There’s nothing but wild fear in Lavellan’s eyes, and the Iron Bull swears and lunges after the rogue, but he’s too far away—

—Lavellan twists the staff in her hands. It’s sloppy, panicked. It works all the same, the single Venatori moving too quickly to stop, and the blade protrudes from his back, dripping red as he stills. The clearing, then, is otherwise quiet.

“...You need some help, boss?” he asks carefully, when Lavellan only stands there and stares at the body. Her gaze snaps to him. It takes a moment for him to see any recognition there.

It’s like watching a wall built up in the space of a few seconds, brick by brick. She tilts her chin up. “No. It’s… fine. I can just.” 

She lets the body drop to the ground and casts a Dispel. The ice cracks. She casts a second time, and it shatters, and she carefully steps out around the shards and the pooling blood.

“That’s one way to deal with fire, Harold,” Varric says with a laugh that’s only a little bit forced, and Lavellan answers bluntly, "Yes," and no one says anything more of it

The second time is after Haven.

It’s a clusterfuck from start to finish, although he gets the Chargers all out safe, and most of the townspeople manage to escape through the tunnels underneath the Chantry well before the avalanche is triggered.

The Iron Bull isn’t fighting with Lavellan for most of it. He isn’t there when she rescues some of the townsfolk and fails to rescue others, isn’t there as she defends the trebuchets. He and his Chargers are battering red Templars away from the walls, and all the while he hopes with a fevered desperation that none of the lyrium which juts from their enemies in jagged shards splinters off to infect them.

The Iron Bull isn’t there, either, when Lavellan volunteers to go alone to the only trebuchet still loaded and intact and trigger an avalanche. He isn’t there to see her stare down Corypheus and hurl ancient curses at him, isn’t there as the magister picks her up and throws her like a rag doll, blighted dragon breathing hot, rank air that steams in the cold night. No one but Corypheus is there to see her rise, teeth gritted in pain but no noise escaping her, and stare down the magister with the fires of Haven reflected in her eyes.

“I have fought your kind before, Tevinter,” she says, “and I have brought greater men than you to their knees. This is no victory for you.”

She fires the trebuchet. No one sees her run, and run, and fall. No one sees her stagger alone into the blizzard which comes on the heels of the fleeing Inquisition, and no one sees her in the long, long hours which follow until a scout reports footprints, and another finds her too-cold body half buried in a drift.

The Iron Bull sees the aftermath. 

There is certainty in the Qun. The religions of the south are messy and violent things, driving them all to fight with one another, for each one is certain they are in the right, in their own individual way. It’s unnecessarily complicated. But it does have a benefit, the Iron Bull has seen—with a cause to believe in, a person can fight long after the battle has been lost. It’s a strong motivator.

These people have seen the one they call Andraste’s Herald walk out of the damned Fade, seen her leave to stand alone against an army, seen her come out of an avalanche alive. She is the cause in which they believe, and in the aftermath of catastrophe…

They sing. Some old Chantry hymn, the Iron Bull isn’t familiar with the words. Many of them bow or take a knee.

Lavellan is silent. As those around her stare at their feet in reverence and awe, the Iron Bull sees her mask break again, and she is exhausted and frightened and deeply, deeply sad.

She closes her eyes. It does little to hide the pain.

She turns without a word and vanishes into the shadows as best she can. The Iron Bull watches her go and does not follow. He makes sure the Chargers are settled in for the night and tries for some shut-eye.

The third time is at Skyhold.

It’s a fortress, and a damn fine one. Makes him uneasy, the way that they’re saying magic is built into the foundations—this high in the mountains, with winter fast approaching, and there’s no snow on the rooftops, or in the courtyard, and the air inside the shelter of the walls is crisp instead of so cold it hurts.

But, it’s safe. And for all of the Iron Bull’s unease, none of the mages Lavellan allied with in Redcliffe have gone batshit and summoned demons or anything. They’ve just been helpful.

Cullen’s troops get the survivors into some type of organization down near the river while any able-bodied workers set to clearing out the rubble of the fortress, making parts of it habitable again. The Iron Bull goes up with the Chargers to assist. When the courtyard is clear, the injured are brought up, sheltered from the wind and weather. He sees Lavellan running around out of the corner of his eye, wearing herself ragged despite the efforts of those around her—she is, technically, one of the injured herself.

Surviving the avalanche did not mean surviving it unscathed, and cold is just as deadly a killer as any blade.

But they’re here. They’re alive, most of them, a trail of funeral pyres dotting the weeks-long march through the Frostbacks from Haven to Skyhold. And there’s something building, from day to day, until in a moment that feels spontaneous—which the Iron Bull knows to mean that it was very carefully planned out—a crowd begins to gather, in ones and twos until they’re pressed shoulder to shoulder in the courtyard, gathered around the base of the stairs leading up to the fortress’ great hall.

Leliana is there, and Ambassador Josephine. Cassandra leads Lavellan to them.

The Iron Bull can’t hear what they’re saying, the back and forth. Leliana carries a sword, the symbol of the Inquisition stamped into the pommel. Lavellan makes a slight gesture towards the staff that she carries, and Cassandra shakes her head as she answers, and Leliana lowers her head as she extends the blade in her hands.

Lavellan takes it.

“History _will_ remember this day!” she declares in a bold voice, one that carries above the gathered crowds, across the courtyard, echoing from the stone walls. The Iron Bull, in that rare moment, is surprised, because Lavellan so rarely speaks to inspire. “Our victory is not yet here, but we have survived, and we will survive to see that victory waiting! As fear runs rampant, see a mage standing for what is right, as _equals to you all,_ for we do not stand alone in this! We stand together, unified.”

She raises the sword high, to raucous cheers and shouts. The Iron Bull watches as someone takes up a hymn from the Chant, joined quickly by others, and he watches as Lavellan closes her eyes. She lowers the sword. She shakes her head, and says nothing, and turns to continue up the rest of the stairs, motioning for her advisors to follow.

The next time the Iron Bull sees her, he makes some small talk, asks her how she’s doing. She smiles and it doesn’t reach her eyes at all.

Lavellan’s got a lot riding on her shoulders, and the Iron Bull has watched her these past several weeks. He doesn’t think she has anyone she trusts enough to lean on, and that, in the end, is what’s going to break her like her mask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing all of these chapters is both frightening and fun, because I've never written from their POVs before, and it's like, hope I'm getting everyone's voice down in a way that feels like them. With Bull I also decided to write a little bit in third-person omniscient instead of third-person limited as a nod to the fact that he's part of a spy network, and there's always more going on than just what one person sees.
> 
> Also, a note on updates: the spring semester has started for me, and I would really like to pass all my classes so I can graduate in May. Chapter updates are probably going to slow down a little bit, to one every several days instead of one every four or five days, as I balance working on this and working on actual class stuff. But!! I am greatly enjoying writing this, and I hope all y’all are also enjoying reading it.
> 
> As always thank you for reading, and I hope you like the chapter. Comments and kudos are v much appreciated.
> 
> Tumblr: floraobsidian


	6. Sera

_Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter._ **—Canticle of Benedictions, 4:10**

**_sera_ **

Lavellan is… too elfy. But, not. Too mage-y, too, except she’s… 

Complicated. Lavellan is complicated, and Sera doesn’t _like_ complicated, not like this. She likes the world all put in order, where she knows what to expect of it all. Rich tits spitting down on everyone else? Awful, but expected, and then she has an excuse to stick some arrows in some faces, leave some bees in some chandeliers, make a new Friend.

Holes in the sky? A frigging archdemon? Once in a lifetime was enough, thanks.

Impossible things aren’t surprises. 

Sera makes herself a nest in the top of the tavern, big windows to look out at the world, plenty of places to stash her things, just enough gaps in the floorboards that she can lie down on the rugs she’s laid out and eavesdrop on what everyone is saying down below. She fills it up with all the things that make her happy, all the colors and textures that make her mind calm down when the world is too much—and fuck all of it, everything happening like this is _too much._

Nothing is normal, and everything is a lot, and everything is complicated. She can’t stick arrows in the Breach, she’s _tried,_ but she can make a little space where _something_ makes sense.

She leaves the door open, most of the time. Better to hear things, better for shouting out comments to conversations no one expects her to be a part of. She sees Lavellan come into the tavern regularly, usually to talk with Bull and the Chargers.

The people in the tavern talk, seeing that. Lavellan is supposed to be all high and mighty and holy, not sitting and drinking with some company of mercs. Sera laughs to hear it; Lavellan doesn’t like fitting in to people’s expectations.

...It’s less funny when she keeps refusing to fit in to Sera’s expectations. Sometimes she makes sense, acting like the rest of them elf-y folks do, something, something, _culture_ and _history_ and on and on and on. Sometimes she argues with Sera about it, and Sera knows what to _do_ when people argue with her or don’t understand, that’s normal!

Sometimes, rarely, but _sometimes,_ Lavellan drops by to check in on her, and she’s nice about it, and it always leaves Sera waiting for the other shoe to drop. Can’t do the courtesy of acting the way big people like her are supposed to act, once they get to be big people.

Though, that’s not all bad. Confusing, and weird, but it’s not _bad._ If she went and acted the way Sera keeps thinking she’s going to, she wouldn’t have gone and marched some of the men through Verchiel.

Lavellan always comes in through the third floor. Once Sera notices, she _notices,_ right? And she’s a lady of the people, or whatever, doesn’t say no to sitting around and spending time with friends and folks, but that’s weird. Why not use the front door? Sera walks up through the third floor herself one time, and out the door at the top, and out onto the ramparts, and there’s _way_ too many steps between there and anywhere else to make it a normal-people way of getting to the tavern.

It’s _weird._ So, of course, she asks about it, hearing footsteps coming down instead of up and springing to her feet, rushing out the door. Lavellan stops short across the room.

“Hey, your graciousness,” Sera greets her with a grin. Lavellan looks like she _might_ smile for a moment—but, no, gone, dammit. She’s going to find a way to get Lavellan to laugh one day. Weird, too, that she’s never smiling except for when nothing’s funny. “Got a moment?”

Lavellan turns from the stairs after a moment and comes to sit at the table nearest to Sera’s door, resting her hands on the table. She’s wearing that scarf still, the pretty yellow one, even though it’s starting to fray at the edges, and there’s a faded stain at one corner like it fell into a dish of food. Sera hops up to sit on the railing and swings her legs back and forth.

“Why don’t you come in through the front door? Y’know, like everyone else does?”

“I like to talk to Cole,” Lavellan answers, shrugging one shoulder. Sera makes a face, because, no _thank_ you, she doesn’t like to be reminded that a demon is her upstairs neighbor! “He is kind to me.”

“Yeah, but he’s not always up there, and you don’t always stop. Like, now? Door opens, and pitter patter you come walking.”

Lavellan sighs. She glances down past Sera to the tavern below them. Cabot is at the bar, pouring out drinks for Krem to take back to the group, and there’s a handful of folks at the tables, and a handful of others dancing to Maryden’s music.

“You said that Corypheus upset you because, him truly being a magister meant that other things also had to be true. The Black City, the Golden City.” She looks solemn. Sera makes another face—she wasn’t expecting something _serious_ , but Lavellan keeps on going. Serious it is, then, ugh. “I know that we disagree on many things, and I do not mean to argue that with you.” 

Didn’t she? Never had a problem with it before.

“They call this place the Herald’s Rest. Have you seen the sign by the door, outside? Andraste herself, all robed in white, carrying a figure whose hand glows green.” She looks down at her own hands. The Mark makes Sera ill to look at for too long, makes the world feel all funny like when she stares into the sky for too long. Can’t imagine walking around with it stuck to her like that. Gives her the heebie-jeebies. “There was no one there for me at the Conclave, or at Haven. It was only _me_ , my fight, my trials. Nothing holy about it, and certainly nothing of a religion I have never followed. So—maybe it is petty of me. But I do not like that sign, so I avoid it.”

That’s… well, Sera can’t judge for being petty. Seems a weird thing to do though, going up and down all those stairs when she could just close her eyes going through the front, right? 

“I could dump some more paint on it, if you like?” she suggests, unsure why. 

Lavellan… well, she’s an okay sort, sort of. Too elfy, too mage-y. But she looks out for the little people. Sera might not like her much, but, hesitantly, _reluctantly,_ she respects her. She gets too big for herself, well. Sera knows how to deal with that just fine.

“No. Faith is… I am no Herald. But faith is important. They need something to give them hope, do they not?”

Too serious. _Too serious,_ nope, not doing it. Lavellan looks all sad and droopy, and she’s talking an awful lot like she’s giving up on something, even if Sera isn’t sure what, and that won’t do at all. Not at all!

She isn’t good with words and all that, though. She throws a pillow. Lavellan catches it after it smacks her in the face and looks deeply confused, which is loads better than looking _sad._

“You’re not a some _thing,_ ” Sera tells her, “don’t be _stupid._ You’re a some _one._ And someone can give someone else hope or, or some shite, and—oh, fuck, Andraste’s tits, don’t cry—”

Lavellan musters up a watery kind of smile as Sera panics, which, _rude,_ smiling at her while she’s freaked out. But, smiling isn’t crying! That’s a win. Or, something.

Before she can remember she’d been sad and serious, Sera loops an arm through Lavellan’s and all but pulls her from the loft and down the stairs. Now she’s too startled to be sad, ha!

That she’s the one to be cheering people up also isn’t normal, and Lavellan is awful and not acting the way Sera expects her to. Not. _Normal._ But, Sera knows how to have fun, and how to find people who know how to have fun, and those people are right downstairs.

“Oi, Bull, you save us any seats?” she calls out, already throwing herself onto the bench between the Iron Bull and Krem and pointing at an empty chair across the table for Lavellan to sit at. 

“Not that it would matter if we had,” Bull answers with a pointed look, but he’s smiling, so it’s fine. “But yeah, there’s always room for you—and for the Inquisitor. Worried you were late, boss!”

“I was… sidetracked,” Lavellan answers, slowly. “But glad to be here. Stitches, Skinner, Dalish.”

“Cheers,” Dalish answers, raising her ale in a toast.

They get roped into a few games of cards, and finally manage to talk Lavellan into joining—she never does, Bull says to Sera in a low tone, claims she’s not very good at bluffing. As Sera finds out, Lavellan is plenty good at bluffing, she just has shit luck at cards, and most of her sovereigns are scattered around the table by the end of the night.

End of the night. Sera’s tipsy, her feet in Krem’s lap as she attempts to explain to Bull how Dagna is trying to enchant her jars of bees. But she’s got an eye on Lavellan as she does, and she gets to see Lavellan crack a smile a couple of times—so she _does_ have it in her! And more than a little tipsy herself, Sera also sees her start to hum along to Maryden’s playing as she sways back and forth in time with the rhythm.

“An’ that’s, that’s…” Her train of thought lost to the wind, Sera tilts her head _allll_ the way back to look at Bull upside down. He’s got a funny looking chin, at this angle. She laughs. “That’s… mission accomplished, that is.”

“Mission accomplished,” Bull repeats, and maybe he’s just indulging her, but Sera thinks he knows exactly what she’s talking about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New challenge called "bioware just let me say ONE nice thing to sera in the game"
> 
> As always, thanks for taking the time to read, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter !! Comments and kudos are greatly appreciated.
> 
> Tumblr: floraobsidian


	7. Blackwall

_Many are those who wander in sin, despairing that they are lost forever, but the one who repents, who has faith unshaken by the darkness of the world, and boasts not, nor gloats over the misfortunes of the weak, but takes delight in the Maker’s law and creations, he shall know the peace of the Maker’s benediction._ **—Canticle of Transfigurations, 10:1**

**_blackwall_ **

Inquisitor Lavellan is… well, Blackwall isn’t sure if he’s more wary of the Inquisitor, or of her spymaster. Sister Nightingale is who he should be frightened of, but as much as he respects them both, there’s something about the Inquisitor that sets him on edge.

It isn’t even that he doesn’t trust her—she’s a good soul, a strong woman. She embodies the Inquisition in that she inspires him to be better, to _do_ better.

But he’s seen her charge at an angry bear in the Hinterlands armed with only her staff and her robes for armor, and he really doesn’t want to get on her bad side. 

It’s a cool day in Skyhold. Most days are cool, and colder at night, but there’s something about this place and it’s strange magic that keeps it from becoming too cold to inhabit. Blackwall steps away from a conversation with Master Dennett, heading inside the shadowed interior of the barn to where he keeps his woodworking tools.

Most of the Inquisition mounts are down in the valley, with the bulk of the troops; the fortress is massive, but for a time it was unsafe, and even now with much of it repaired, it isn’t large enough to fit everyone inside. There also isn’t much room for the horses to go to pasture, inside a fortress made of stone, so Blackwall doesn’t mind living above the barn. It’s not too crowded, and even if it smells like manure closer to the occupied stalls, most of the time, its quiet.

Less so, now. Blackwall turns a corner to hear voices, small and young, and gentle laughter, and the scene before him is unusual enough that he stops to watch instead of backing away and leaving them to their time.

There’s nearly a dozen children all crowded around the Inquisitor’s feet in the shade, some of them elven, some of them human. Blackwall recognizes a few, the kids of servants or soldiers who work in the fortress. Others are dressed in clothes far more patched and mended—little ones who came with the refugees that never stop streaming in. The oldest is twelve or thirteen, and the youngest is a babe just old enough to crawl, and each to a one of them is enthralled.

Lavellan is smiling, something rare and soft, and she gestures expansively, telling a story, sitting cross-legged on the packed-earth floor. Her coat, some finely-tailored thing of Orlesian silks, with the Inquisition's symbol embroidered on the sleeve, is stained with dirt and dust. She doesn't seem to care.

“...Avvar chieftain, strong her tribe with dwarven trade, battles brought to men _and_ demons, won with wisdom, fire, and blade!” The children aren’t too close to her; there is space at her feet, and Blackwall sees why, for wisps of dust stir up in a breeze he cannot feel, small and shadowy figures. Two of them bow to one another. “Then did Tyrdda look to Hendir, dwarf-prince friend, children giver, took her freedom—Hendir, glad, wished her what he could not give her…” 

It doesn’t sound like what he’d expect of a Dalish tale, and the cadence of it isn’t anything he’s familiar with. A story, but a poem? The children all clap and cheer as the figures of dust act out the end of the tale, Lavellan’s fingertips glowing with a faint light. 

“Another?” one of them cries out, a little boy with pointed ears and curly hair. “Will you tell another, hahren?"

“Hahren,” Lavellan repeats, pressing one hand against her chest. “Are you calling me old, da’len?”

The boy in question blinks, wide-eyed, unsure how to answer. Lavellan laughs and brushes a lock of hair from his face.

“I only tease, child. But we have more company! Hello, Warden. Do you have stories of your own to share?”

“Ah…” Blackwall startles, not noticing _her_ noticing, and he isn’t sure what to do with the strange openness in her expression, the kindness in her gaze. “My stories aren’t… suitable for children, mostly.”

That only seems to excite the little rascals, the idea of being told something they’re not supposed to know. Lavellan gets them all to settle with a few sharp words, however, and starts off into another story, this of two elven gods, twin brothers who were so close they might have been of one spirit. The dust at her feet dances and shifts, two men, two ravens.

Eventually she shoos them all back to their parents, or their older siblings, or to go mind themselves in the case of the older few. Then she stands, stretches, and takes up her staff from where it had been placed unobtrusively in a corner—or as unobtrusively as what might as well be a polearm can be placed. It isn't the same as the one she had carried when he first met her, near the Crossroads of the Hinterlands; that had been lost, somewhere between her bringing down the avalanche on Haven and reappearing in the aftermath, in that period of time she still largely refuses to speak of. This one is a similar design, though she says it's better balanced, and lighter to carry, and there are runes embedded into the silverite blade affixed to the end.

Blackwall’s seen her fight with that thing. There’s no ignoring it when a battle starts up.

“You’re good with them,” he says gruffly. "The kids." His thoughts are suddenly on his little sister, no older than any of those children had been last time he saw her all those decades ago. “Do you have siblings, Inquisitor? Children?”

Lavellan smiles again. It’s a little more sad this time, a little less fond. Blackwall could kick himself—if she has children, she’s never said, and if she _had_ children, past-tense… 

“No children,” she answers. At least he hasn’t gone and shoved his boot in his mouth. “I had a sister, but she was taken before I was born.”

“Taken?” Blackwall repeats, surprised.

“My mother lived in the alienage in Ostwick. My sister had magic. The Templars found out, and they found out that my mother was trying to hide her from them.” She sighs heavily, shakes her head. “They took her, and then they came back, to deal with the woman who had been, in their words, harboring an apostate. My mother ran. All the way to the Dalish, to Clan Lavellan, who took her in.”

“That’s…”

Blackwall shakes his head, unsure of what to say. He had known, abstractly, of what abuses mages suffered at the hands of Templars, and yet every time he hears a story from a mage about their past, he finds himself surprised. He should know enough by now not to be.

“She told me stories of the city. I do not think she ever truly felt like she belonged with the clan, but they treated her as she had always been there, and they treated me no different for being born to her. But. I am talking too much, Warden, my apologies.”

“No, no, it’s…” Just because he doesn’t know what to say doesn’t mean he wants her to feel like she _can’t_ talk about anything. Maybe it would be better, if she was talking to someone who isn’t him, but all the same… “It isn’t a problem, Inquisitor. Not a problem at all. D’you miss them, then? Your clan?”

She looks, for a moment, startled, like she wasn’t expecting the question. Then a moment longer, like she isn’t sure how to answer, like no one has bothered to ask her yet.

“I… miss home. Very much. And I know it will not be the same when I return to it.” She leans against her staff, her expression distant, her mind somewhere else. “I miss the people. I did not have friends, precisely, but I had community.”

“Once this is all over,” Blackwall says, and he knows even before he finishes the sentence that not a one of them knows it when _over_ will be, if it ever comes at all, “you can go back to them. Hell, you could invite some of them here, if you thought they’d be willing.”

She shakes her head. “There is something happening in the alienage in Wycome, and my clan tries to give aid to the elves of the city when they are able. Maybe it would be safer here, but I do not think any would be willing to split apart from the rest. Maybe… maybe later. Maybe soon.”

He nods, and Lavellan takes her leave after a few minutes more of idle conversation. Not that she goes far; Blackwall can hear her voice, faint, as she speaks in her native tongue to the hart which resides a few rows away. A proud, noble creature, though Maker help the poor stable hand who tries to saddle it, for it doesn’t seem to like anyone but Lavellan.

...There’s a thought. He isn’t familiar enough with the halla to carve one, but the hart is right there for him to sketch and observe, and he needs smaller projects to whittle away the hours. Gives his hands something to do.

It occurs to him, much later, as he watches her delight over the small wooden figurine, turning it around in her hands to examine all the details, that he’s seen her smile all of twice—with the children, that first time, and again as she is given a gift, a small and simple thing.

She thanks him, and hums under her breath as she walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been frowning at the end of this chapter since I wrote it but this is as edited as it's gonna get. Next two chapters are Solas and Cole, and then we're diving into the leadup to and fallout of Halamshiral! Lavellan is going to love the Winter Palace and all the Orlesian nobles. /sarcasm
> 
> As always, thank you for taking the time to read, and I hope that you enjoyed the chapter. Comments and kudos are very much appreciated.
> 
> Tumblr: floraobsidian


	8. Solas

_ World fell away then, misty in mem’ry, ‘cross Veil and into the valley of dreams a vision of all worlds, waking and slumb’ring, spirit and mortal to me appeared.  _ **—Canticle of Andraste, 1:10**

**_solas_ **

He is as of yet uncertain what to make of Lavellan.

She does not know what to make of him, either, but this does not bring him any comfort. If she trusted him at all, she may be more amenable to his questions about the Anchor and how it affects her. But she does not; she is wary, and cautious, and though she does for him as she does for all the rest of her compatriots and makes the time to come and see him, she does not hesitate to tell him her thoughts on his opinions. Loudly. In great detail.

He is uncertain what to make of her. He definitely shouldn’t like her. And yet.

Because it  _ must  _ be the Anchor, mustn’t it? That which has set her apart from every other he has met in this strange and muted world. He can  _ feel  _ the way that the Veil shifts around her, the strange and unique hum of her magic, different from the bright bursts of Dorian’s spellcasting, the sharp, precise staccato of Vivienne’s—it is the Anchor’s influence, surely? 

If she would only  _ speak  _ to him.

Sometimes she will, for despite disagreements she makes the effort to talk with the ones around her from day to day, and sometimes even their conversations are engaging, intriguing. Just that, sometimes, too, they go from discussion to heated debate and even he isn’t entirely sure how they got there.

When he cannot gain answers from her or from the many books he has been able to procure through the Inquisition’s reach, he turns as always to the Fade, and walking its endless expanse is like walking through Skyhold, like walking through home. He takes his leisure, crossing a field of tall grasses and flowers, the noontime sun bright above him, uncertain of where he is but letting his intent guide his footsteps. The flowers range from white to softer shades of pink, smaller stalks branching out from the stem until they burst into tiny blossoms, fragrant and sweet, and the tallest ones are nearly the same height as he is.

Underneath his feet, the ground ripples like water.

Solas adjusts his path accordingly and continues.

There is a spirit of faith, old, and she tells him stories of battles won and lost in the name of belief. Solas gifts her a small bunch of flowers he had plucked from their stem, and she tucks them behind where her ear would be and drifts away. 

The ground ripples, and warps, and he smells smoke in the air. The long grasses have withered under the scorching sun, been trampled underfoot—he walks, and walks, and the ground beneath him turns to mud, and the stench of the dead is thick in the ash-filled air, and he can hear a distant wailing on the wind, calling out for an answer that will never come. 

The magic tugs at his skin. The Anchor. He can feel how it pulls on the Fade around him, how its magic draws back to his mana, for they are one and the same, and a few more pieces slide into place.

This was not the intent, and yet. There—a glimpse of red, and yellow, and flickering green as the Inquisitor stumbles forward, onward, endlessly. There, too—fear, though he does not feel frightened himself. This is not his dream nor his mind, but the air always feels colder in the vicinity of a nightmare, and despite the distant smoldering fires he catches glimpses of through the smoke, the air is cold across his skin. 

This was not the intent, but this is dangerous. The Anchor will draw the curious towards it, and a mage must always be wary of the curious in dreams. He draws closer, calls out:

“Inquisitor!”

The distant figure stops; so, too, does the mournful echoing cry, leaving behind a resonant hum in the silence.

“It is Solas,” he says to her. “You are dreaming, Inquisitor.”

Eventually he is close enough to see her face, and to see the Anchor, hissing and spitting in a way it does not in the waking world—does it react, then, every time she dreams? Is a part of that key here, behind the Veil, and a part of it in the physical realm?

What does that  _ do  _ to her, if that is the case, part of her here and part there? 

She rarely answers his questions when she is in a good mood. He doubts she will deign to answer him now.

Closer still, and there are bones crunching underneath his feet, and underneath the bones and the crushed grass are clusters of those tiny white flowers, the petals split and browning and bloody. Lavellan is nearly grey with—fright?—an expression so out of place with what he knows of her that he at last stops, but by then he is close enough to see her expression change to recognition, and then suspicion. 

“Tell me, do you make a habit of entering other people’s dreams?” she asks him, and her voice is high and thin. Her staff is absent, her scarf singed at the edges, her feet bloodied. Through the smoke and the ash that clouds the air, he can see strange spires stretching up, like the tall buildings of a city, but they are never clear enough for him to guess where they might be, if they are anywhere at all.

Is this a dream of memory? Or is this Lavellan and her fears of what rests on her shoulders, the Inquisition, of what could happen if she gives the wrong order? The  _ right  _ order?

She would likely not appreciate that question, either. She certainly would not answer him truthfully.

“I usually do not without permission.”

He keeps his distance, now, and the ash eddies between them.

“I felt the Fade begin to twist, and in concern I went to see what could have been the source of the disruption. When I realized it was you here, I grew worried.”

“There was no need.”

Lavellan folds her arms across her chest in a gesture Solas has come to recognize as defensive, both a way of protecting herself and a way of shoring herself up, and she looks at him, and then at the ground, the bones, the flowers. She breathes, a visible effort at reclaiming her calm, and so too does the dream begin to settle around him. When he next looks up, the sky is visible through the smoke, and the towering spires are gone from the horizon.

“I have dealt with dreams and with nightmares. I have dealt with this one. I will deal with it again, I am sure.”

Solas inclines his head, accepting the deflection for what it is. When he shifts on his feet, there is only grass beneath them, and the smoke is but morning fog, and in the distance there are tall and spindling pines standing watch at the edge of the plains.

“All the same, Inquisitor, I am glad to see you well.”

“Well!” 

She laughs sharply—another characteristic he has found in her, her penchant for laughter, when there is no humor to be found. He still isn’t sure if she delights in the ironic or if it is a method of coping, or something of both.

“Well, yes!” she exclaims, and her voice is as sharp as her laugh, edged with slight hysteria, “I am as well as I will ever be, one of the People, surrounded by Chantry zealots.”

“Inquisitor—” he begins, and stops. Hesitates.

She holds no particular fondness for him, and they both know it—though he does not doubt she will fight for him as she would for any others in her inner circle. Her personal dislike of an individual has never once extended beyond  _ personal _ . Even Dorian’s information she takes at face value and brings to the war table.

She holds no particular fondness for him (though a lack of fondness does not translate to immediate dislike, he knows this too) and so Solas  _ knows  _ that he has no reason to like her—admire her skill, her wit, her determination. And yet.

“Inquisitor, if you prefer,” he offers, “I can ensure your sleep remains unbroken through the night until the morning.”

For a moment, he thinks she will not accept.

But she has never been one to turn down an offer of aid, and after a long moment of silence broken only by the whisper of a sourceless breeze, she sighs, and she nods.

“That would be… welcome.”

“It is no trouble,” he answers.

#

In the afternoon, as he is drafting a new section of the fresco in his study, he hears footsteps coming down from the library. The steady, quiet tread marches down the stairs, and across the stone floor, and pauses just beneath the ladder he’s standing on, and Lavellan speaks:

“I’ve’an’viralan. You are a Dreamer.”

Solas sets down his brush across the palette, the gray-shadowed form of Corypheus staring at him from out the ashes of Haven and the wet plaster.

“I thought you were aware of that from our previous conversations.”

“I knew that you dreamed, not that you  _ Dreamed. _ ” 

He can picture her, looking up at him with her typical grace and solidity, arms folded. He instead looks at the canvas—he must be quick, lest the plaster dries and he must start over again, but he can work and speak simultaneously.

“The skill is nearly lost among the People. I also did not know that you could enter the dreams of another.”

There is an edge to her voice. Solas considers this, and considers the colors on his palette, crimson red and golden-orange.

“I did not intend to overstep.”

“I meant what I said, that your aid was welcome. But. Please do not do it again.”

Understandable. “As you wish, Inquisitor.”

He resumes his work. Corypheus takes shape, tall and looming, the weave of the Veil behind him, and beneath him, the fire, the ash. Intent and focused, it takes Solas some time, then, to realize that he has not heard footsteps leading away. He glances down. Lavellan, sitting at his desk, turns a page in her book, absorbed in the text.

“Do not take this as a complaint, Inquisitor, but I am surprised you would come here for company.”

“I have questions,” she replies, “but you are working, and the quiet is nice.”

She turns another page. The light around her hand flickers dim even through her glove. Solas hums and returns to the paint. This section will be finished, soon enough, and then there will be time for questions, and perhaps questions of his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, this entire chapter: solas. solas no. people are real actual people, solas, why are you like this.
> 
> Anyway, sorry about the delay in this. I’m in my last semester of college, writing two research papers for two different seminars, and Solas is a very stubborn character to write correctly. Next few chapters should be posted a bit more regularly, since they’re pre-written.
> 
> This chapter goes out to my roommate, who patiently allows my one am ramblings about this story and offers feedback to my frequent and unrelated questions.
> 
> Also, Solas' dialogue with Lavellan is in the Hallelujah cadence, like in canon! I spent too much time fiddling around with it to get it right to /not/ point it out. Lavellan starts it with "Do you make a habit of entering other people's dreams?" and ends it with "There was no need," at which point the dialogue no longer ascribes to a set meter.
> 
> As always, thanks for taking the time to read, and I hope you enjoyed. Comments and kudos are v much appreciated.
> 
> Tumblr: floraobsidian


	9. Cole

_Then the Voice of the Maker rang out, the first Word, and His Word became all that might be: dream and idea, hope and fear, endless possibilities. And from it, made his firstborn._ **—Canticle of Threnodies, 5:1**

**_cole_ **

She burns bright, brighter than the Fade that flickers by her fingertips, and Cole is enthralled by it.

There is so much hurt in this place, but Skyhold is serene, for all its motion, movement. He does what he can to help, to heal, and he sits at the railing at the top of the tavern and listens to the music making merry. And he goes to find the Inquisitor, the Herald heralding herself, to listen to the humming of her hand.

She’s like him, and not. It’s curious, and he is not Curiosity or Knowledge or Wisdom, but he still wants to know things.

When she finds him, he asks her.

“I’m a spirit,” he says to her, sitting on the edge of the ramparts, feet dangling above the drop. She sits next to him without fear, her legs crossed. “I didn’t know. I thought I was a ghost, until I learned. I’m mostly a spirit, mostly me. You’re mostly you, but more. It’s strange. Do you know why?”

Cold stone, and blood, and cold beyond the stone, dying, desperate, praying. The light around her is green.

“You can—you know? You can tell?” 

Surprise, shock, sharp relief. Cole looks at her.

“Lots of people should be able to see it. You look like yourself.”

She laughs. It isn’t a happy laugh. Cole is never sure what to do when people laugh, but are unhappy. It doesn’t mix right.

“I don’t know who that is, Cole.”

Uncertain, unknowing, holes like the holes in the sky, do the holes in her mind come from there? Memories, missing, mother. Her mother. What was her name? 

She’s forgotten. 

Cole tells her.

She stares at him. Cole doesn’t know what to do when people stare. Has he said it wrong? Should he start over? No, no, she’s been kind to him, she understands him, as much as she understands anything, as much as he understands himself. Forgetting is another hole. She won’t know. Cole will.

She’s still staring.

“Your father’s name was—”

“I know their names. I forgot them, but I _know_ them, and—and I—” 

Cole reaches out and takes her hand. Most of the time, he doesn’t. Turnips on the windowsill, the hummed notes of an old lullaby, knives in a bucket. Touching, tentative, twisting away? No. She holds tight to him. Resting at his side, looking up at the stars. The easy contact in the clan, sitting in the grass, feet in her lap, fingers braiding flowers into crowns.

She’s missed this.

“I do not know what I am, but people want me to be more anyway. I do not know _who_ I am, and they make me an idol.”

“You’re as much as you are.”

Her shoulders slump. She’s certain and uncertain all at once, does not believe that she has the luxury of doubt, but how can she not, when she sees how her words warp and waver, time washing so much away?

Cole doesn’t know how to fix that hurt yet. It’s too large. 

“What if I—I remember, some things, and I have forgotten many more things, and I—I walked into the Fade, and fell out again, and I don’t—am I mad? Have I gone mad, Cole? I get so lost in my thoughts I—what if—”

He squeezes her hand. She squeezes back, tight.

“It’s harder to hear you,” Cole tells her, “like counting birds against the sun. The Mark, it’s brighter than you. But you are… you’re you. And _all_ of you is real. Even the parts that don’t make sense.” Her hand tightens around his. He catches a stray thought, a worry he can soothe more easily than most.

“I won’t tell anyone, if you don’t want me to. It could help you, if you did, but it would hurt you, too. So I won’t.”

“Sometimes,” she says, soft, sad. “Sometimes the things that help us hurt us as well. But I cannot tell them. They cannot know. You won’t tell them, you promise?”

They _could_ help her. Testing, untrusting, but there’s only so long a person can fight side by side with another _without_ trust. She’s scared to trust them, can’t let it happen again, they’ll turn on me _again_ —but they could help her. A little bit of time. That’s all. 

“Promise,” Cole agrees. The wisp of worry washes away.

“Thank you.”

They stay at the edge of the ramparts in silence, and she holds fast to him, and he hums a harmony with the murmuring of her magic. The breeze catches the notes and carries them away.

Later, Cole has the realization that this is when the two of them became friends. It’s been a long time since he had friends.

It’s nice.

  
#

“They’re not patronizing you. They think you’re important.”

“They think I am important because of _this_ —” She holds up her hand, and the Fade flashes across the tavern walls in flickering green. “—and because they are told I am important.”

Her voice is flat, and the humming around her in contrast is clashing, discordant, dissonant. She doesn’t like having to meet with the nobles who come to Skyhold, and that is all she has done today, and even now as she tries to relax in the tavern there are too many whispers and stares. Cole says hello when she comes in, and feels the crawl under her skin like ants across his after she goes downstairs, and later she comes up to join him with a half-eaten plate of food.

It’s simple, hearty fare. Ferelden. She misses food from home.

“If I was just another elf, they would not think the same. They _do_ not think the same.”

She feels wrong in her own skin, sometimes. Cole wants to help her. He doesn’t know how. He thinks, maybe, that just being her friend is all he can do, and that will be enough.

“It upsets you.”

She looks at him from out the corners of her eyes and scoffs.

“Yes,” she says.

He thinks, waits, wonders. She tells him not to make people forget, that choices matter, even the ones no one knows about. He doesn’t want to make _her_ forget. It means he has to think about what to say, careful, cautious, wanting to get it right the first time, and—well, the silence isn’t a bad thing. She likes the quiet. Sometimes she hums with him. She remembers that she likes to do that.

“I’m alive,” he tells her. “All spirits are. But spirits don’t die the same. I’ll remember how this was. And the Fade remembers, too.”

She carefully sets down the bread in her hand, on the edge of the plate, Mark flaring thoughts flashing— 

She smiles. Sad, slight, but still a smile.

“I am glad that someone will.”

“It won’t just be me. Probably. Quill quick across the parchment, ink-stained fingers, not that word, not _that_ word, going to get it eventually… Varric’s writing it down. He doesn’t have a title yet.”

Twisting, turning—not quite happy, but fond. “I thought he was going to call it, This Shit Is Weird.”

“He says that publishers don’t like profanity in the title.”

She laughs at the irony. “That will be the least scandalous thing by the time he has finished.”

Cole sits with her in relative quiet until she finishes eating.

  
#

“Why do you do it?” he asks her one day.

She looks up from her desk. They have given her a room, at the top of a high tower, and they have given her finely tailored clothes and furniture gifted from nobles and books and braided rugs and many other things of luxury. Josephine asked for stained glass to be put in the last time she was away, and she came back to find windows of green like sunlight through leaves, but it isn’t the same. It’s all very nice, but she doesn’t like it. It’s too much. The silks alone could be traded for supplies for a month for her clan, but they are _gifts_ to her? It’s too much. 

Her desk is in the corner, bracketed by bookshelves and stone-brick walls, and all the heat in the room leeches out the glass windows to the mountains’ cold but she still won’t light a fire in the hearth. Scattered across the surface there are papers and maps and ink and frustration.

“Why do I do what?” she asks him in return.

Cole sits at the very edge of her bed. The blankets are soft. Softer are the gathered furs and blankets and bedroll she keeps in a smaller room meant for storage, with a couple candles for light and the books she has been reading when she has the energy to understand the words, the history, the twisting. He bounces his legs, toe against the heel, reverse, repeat.

At her desk is where she keeps the things she does even though she doesn’t want to, letters and words and decisions, so many decisions. Cole hadn’t realized a decision could be turned into paper and ink like that. 

They’re asking her about the peace talks in Halamshiral, and all she feels she can do is laugh in hysterics. That is her decision, too? The fate of nations? She never wanted that kind of power.

“You’re helping, even though you don’t want to. Cassandra, keeping _calm,_ can’t afford to argue, but… you don’t like her. But you’re putting pins in the map for her.”

She looks down at the papers, shuffles them into smaller piles. Her shoulders slump in a sigh.

“She is… too much like me. I think that is why we argue. But I am their Inquisitor, am I not? They follow me.”

Hating, hesitant, terrified that time will twist again, and not knowing what the present will hold—she’s still talking. Cole tries to listen. The things she’s saying are just as important as the things she won’t.

“If I could, I would not speak with many of them. But I have to. If they are to follow, they must… I must be someone they can respect.” She presses another pin into the map. “So if Cassandra asks me to help her find certain individuals the Seekers of Truth intended to find themselves, before their disappearance, I will help her. When she asks for aid in tracking down the missing Seekers, I will see to it she has that aid. When Tevinter…”

She pauses. Her lips twist. Cole tastes bitter herbs and oil slick on the back of his tongue. It’s not Dorian’s fault, she knows that, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

“When _Lord Pavus_ provides information on the locations of Venatori camps as a gesture of _good faith,_ I will use that information. When Lady Vivienne requests I return certain tomes that were stolen from Circle towers, I will bring her any I find, not because I agree with her or because I have fondness for the Circles, but because I do not want to see more history lost. Does that… make sense?”

“You help them because it’s right to help them,” he says, but the phrase still isn’t right. Questions are harder here, trying to find the right words that mean the same thing to everyone who hears them. “But you don’t want to? It’s…”

She puts the pins aside and comes to sit next to him. 

“I am as much as I am.” She echoes his words back to him. “But it has been… Once I was me, for me, and that was all. Now I am me, for many many others, and I do not think there is any returning from it.”

“I don’t know if I can fix that,” he tells her, and she laughs, and it’s still a sad laugh. She should laugh when she’s happy, but even when she laughs at something she thinks is funny, it’s not-right. 

“Sometimes,” she says, “there is no difference between little hurts and big hurts. Either one can break a person, if there is enough of the other. You do not need to try and fix this for me, Cole. It is enough to just… talk.”

Talking is harder than helping sometimes. Words are _weird._ But if talking is helping, he can try to understand it more.

So they talk. And later… 

There is a small shelf in the room where she sleeps. Next to the books she reads, and the candles: five rings, found on corpses killed without reason, caught in the crossfire of all this chaos; a golden horn, found in the wreckage of a merchant caravan, hanal’ghilan, killed without reason, tearful rage as she cradles it near to her chest; a small set of prayer stones, purchased at Haven; a blood-soaked toy, carefully cleaned and cared for; a wood carving of a hart, patterns etched into the antlers; a yellow shawl, carefully folded and set aside when she isn’t wearing it.

Cole has money. When he travels with her, she insists any coin they find or are given be split evenly, with a portion returned first to anyone in the area who would need it, and what is left returned to the Inquisition, and some is given to them later as payment. He doesn’t need the gold, but he keeps it in his space above the tavern, next to the bucket of knives and the mint for the cats.

He slides past the notice of soldiers and scouts and refugees until he finds the merchant stall in Skyhold that sells fancy things for too much coin. The man has many scarves and hats and masks, and there are many people who think they are rich and important who come to visit Skyhold and then come to buy from him. Cole makes himself be noticed, and points to a statuette.

It still isn’t quite right. The halla are not viewed the same by people outside the Dalish. But he thinks that she will appreciate it more than someone who wants it because they think it will make them important and give them something to talk about.

He leaves the halla figurine on her desk, next to the map of pins and the papers she doesn’t care for. Maybe it will make her smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An incomplete list of items found in Inquisitor Revas Lavellan's inventory:  
> \- five rings: one diamond (inscribed), two gold, and two silver, found on corpses in various places throughout the game  
> \- figurine of armored Andraste  
> \- D’Onterre crest ring, taken as a reminder  
> \- gold horn, found on the Exalted Plains  
> \- candle stubs  
> \- prayer stones  
> \- personal locket  
> \- battle of Valarian knucklebone relic  
> \- ivory halla figurine  
> \- Lartys slave band  
> \- ancient penal bracelet  
> \- blood soaked teddy bear 
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you liked the chapter. Comments and kudos are appreciated <3 Next up, the Winter Palace!!! I'm sure that's going to go Just Fine.
> 
> tumblr: @floraobsidian


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